Lisa A. Lindsay

This project is a contextualized, collective biography the Vaughan family, whose members included an African slave brought to South Carolina, an American "repatriate" to Nigeria, influential activists in colonial Lagos, and relatives who maintained contact with each other across the Atlantic. It links the histories of the USA, Africa, and the African diaspora as well as slavery and colonialism. This one family's story shows the complex and multiple pathways that connected Africa and the Americas, provides specific examples of African identity in the USA, and reveals new ways in which consciousness of the diaspora affected people within Africa.